chop shop

November 20, 2009 10:11 AM

this should be pretty simple - Ive got a HUGE image (72" x 96") and want to print it. Thats going to be REAL expensive to print as one piece so i was hoping to find some software that would chop it into many 8x10" pieces that I can then print in a standard printer. Suggestions?

I am aware of rasterbator, but that converts the image into half-tone pattern which Id like to avoid. Ive got a lot of detail id like to preserve.

posted by nihlton to media & arts (13 comments total)

If you have a copy of Illustrator, it handles tiled pages very nicely in the Print dialog.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 10:16 AM on November 20, 2009

Took me some googling to remember the right site, but Block Posters it is. Thanks to Blockposters I have a giant picture of Ulysses S. Grant on the wall of our office.
posted by sciencegeek at 10:18 AM on November 20, 2009 [3 favorites]

Block Posters looks like the best option. For a smaller image, I would have suggested Rasterbator.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 10:22 AM on November 20, 2009

awesome. Thanks sciencegeek!
posted by nihlton at 10:25 AM on November 20, 2009

crap. they have a 1 mb filesize limit. my image is close to 12 mb.

other options?
posted by nihlton at 10:26 AM on November 20, 2009

crap. they have a 1 mb filesize limit. my image is close to 12 mb.

Pre-chop it into 12 pieces.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:37 AM on November 20, 2009

sys - im 99% sure there has to be some freeware software out there that does this on the desktop. id rather avoid the web application route if i can specially if it means two iterations of slicing and re-stitching.
posted by nihlton at 10:41 AM on November 20, 2009

other options?

As Optimus Chyme said, Illustrator will do this nicely. Here's a guide. You can download a full-featured but time-limited trial copy of Illustrator; you'll just need to create a free account with Adobe.
posted by jedicus at 10:41 AM on November 20, 2009

jedicus - i'll turn to that in the absence of a less tangled alternative. thanks for the link to the trial copy!
posted by nihlton at 10:43 AM on November 20, 2009

I use an open source app called Posterazor
posted by kuppajava at 10:47 AM on November 20, 2009 [4 favorites]

perfect
posted by nihlton at 11:02 AM on November 20, 2009

i just found andreamosaic this morning
posted by nadawi at 2:16 PM on November 20, 2009

I might be missing something, but if I try to print an image in Microsoft Paint that's bigger than one page, it automatically spans to the next page... similarly for pretty much any photo-viewing program, ever.

(Be sure that "Adjust to 100% normal size," instead of "Fit to 1 by 1 pages" is checked in Page Setup, if you go the Paint route.)
posted by Jacen Solo at 7:16 PM on November 20, 2009